One Last
by SlvrSoleAlchmst1
Summary: Lelouch was too smart to believe his affairs had truly been settled upon the exchange of the Zero mask.  One of my Endspiels; have at it.


_Author Note: I'm going to borrow my girlfriend's clever phrase and call this fanfic "yaoi _flavored_" rather than flat out yaoi. Yes, that is the level of slash in this piece. Have at it._

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Lelouch was too smart to believe his affairs had truly been settled upon the exchange of the Zero mask.

He'd used his softest words, his sincerest gestures, and he hadn't forced the issue. Suzaku had listened reverently, illustrated compassion and understanding as he lifted the mask from Lelouch's hands and accepted the burden that such an action suggested — but when the moment had passed and Lelouch left Suzaku standing in the throne room, there were still so many questions.

Late morning matured outside now. Lelouch sat in a stiff-backed chair, inside one of his private chambers in the palace, gazing listlessly out the window. At high noon, his entourage would set out, bearing him on his imperial float to the execution grounds with the prisoners that had opposed him. He couldn't remember the location where the execution would take place, but it didn't matter. Lelouch didn't intend to get there; there would be no execution. Zero was going to kill him.

The fancy clock on the wall chimed eleven, and Lelouch turned to study it. Its face reflected the sunlight, and dust motes drowsed in the air before it. Did he have so little time left? He studied the rows of bookshelves, the cold and empty fireplace, the panel on the wall that opened to reveal a great computer screen, and the table and chairs in the corner where he sometimes took tea. All the details of the room, so familiar in these last months as to be branded upon his mind like ink — but soon he would leave them forever. Despite it, Lelouch felt a strange sense of calm. The only thing that bothered him was that, while _his_ struggle was nearly ended… Suzaku's wasn't.

The knock he'd been expecting came loudly. He pushed himself up from his chair, limbs cracking as if they were as bone-weary as he was, and the chair feet scraped the floor. "Come in."

The old wooden door flew wide, whining.

"You've Geassed everyone in the hallway."

Lelouch smiled. "They were already Geassed, remember? Everyone who serves me in this palace. Everyone but you. I merely gave them orders not to notice Zero when he arrived." Lelouch's eyes ran slowly over the figure at the door, lithe and gleaming in a very familiar outfit of deep blue and violet and golden edging. They shared sizes nearly exactly; the jacket only stretched a little too snugly across the shoulders. And the cape suited him, Lelouch decided. "Don't just stand there."

Suzaku closed the door. "How can you act so normally? Don't you realize that in less than an hour—" But he didn't finish. The Zero mask he tucked beneath his left arm, while his right hand tugged down the inner facemask from his nose and lips. His green eyes fluttered to the floor.

"Would you like some tea? I can call for tea."

"My god, Lelouch, no — I would not like some tea." Suzaku's eyes roamed the room; he squinted at different objects as if he could not comprehend their ordinariness, their place among this upheaval — the curtains, the wall hangings, the fire poker, the chessboard on the tea table. Lelouch monitored him coolly. "The truth is, now that I've had the night to think this over…."

"Go on."

Suzaku still had not moved from the door, and he gestured brokenly now in Zero's attire. "Lelouch. Do you know what it's like to lie down in bed at night, accepting without a choice that you won't sleep because your mind and body are sick with disquiet? Do you know what it's like to keep yourself awake out of the need to confront that disquiet, just to make sure you aren't missing something important? Fear that you'll regret something, fear that you'll fail, fear that if you stay awake to think long enough, you'll want to change your mind even though you've already made it? I forfeited everything to you when I vowed to become your Knight of Zero. You've always done things I've disapproved of, but I stopped protesting when I realized you were building to this conclusion. Like you said, we both understood in the Realm of C that people desire the future. The only way to grasp the future fairly is for you to become a symbol of hate, and for me to erase your existence. I knew it had to be this way. But I can't take it now! I fell asleep for only an hour and I had nightmares worse than anything I've seen in this life here, and I've seen FLEIA. It's ripping at me." His tone darkened. "It wasn't fair of you to reveal the full details of Zero Requiem only last night, of _how_ it is I have to kill you. Look at me, in your Zero uniform!"

Suzaku clenched his hand around the fabric of the cape, flung it out as if to deny it, to abhor it for all of its absurdity in draping around his broad shoulders. "This cape, these gloves, with my hands…. To do it like this—! It hasn't had time to process. I'm not certain of anything anymore, Lelouch. I'm falling apart, I'm so sick with it." His eyes shone with the gloss of exhaustion.

Lelouch rested his hand on the windowsill, lowered himself back into his seat, his body flimsy like a bubble. "I know, Suzaku."

"I understand everything perfectly, but only with my mind." Suzaku caught Lelouch's eyes. "My heart hasn't had time to catch up. Lelouch, my heart is breaking."

Lelouch blinked and removed his gaze to the window once more. His chest constricted. He had expected this sort of reaction from Suzaku, but perhaps he had underestimated the visceral affect it would have on himself. He fought it down. "I did my best, Suzaku. If I had told you about this the moment I first conceived of it, things would only have been awkward. I had no desire to be a walking dead man in your eyes for that length of time, or to see you go mad with early knowledge of the complexity, of the despondency of how I mean this to come about. I could have told you just this morning, given you no time for digestion whatsoever. Instead I gave you what I could, and if you're not happy with it, let me ask you this: Would the amount of time you had to think about details actually have changed anything?" Halfway through his final sentence, Lelouch had risen again. Now he stood across from Suzaku on the ornate carpet, his features expressionless, waiting for his knight to answer.

Suzaku looked away.

Lelouch answered for him. "No, your resolution would not have changed. Killing me is what you want, Suzaku. Long ago, I passed the point in your heart where forgiveness was still possible, where the old memories of friendship between us could still redeem me in your eyes. It was your instinct to agree to this, and you know you will see it through. I understand it. I want it. I am allowing it. Don't torture yourself now with the petty, leftover emotions."

But emotion was what immediately creased the lines in Suzaku's face, and what churned Lelouch's stomach when he saw it.

"You paint it so harshly, Lelouch. And no matter what you say, it has never been easy to think of killing you, even though I know it's what you deserve." Suzaku shifted, and his boot heel rang against the hardwood beyond the carpet. "You call my feelings petty?" The wavering about his brow fast became a scowl. "I should have known better than to think you'd take the time to mourn. You don't hold on to the past at all, do you? The way we used to care about each other, you and I and Nunnally — none of that matters to you now that the end is in sight."

This time it was Lelouch who looked away. Hold on to the past? Of course he didn't. What good was it, when all he'd ever wanted was to grasp a better future? But Suzaku was accusing him of not caring, and that part wasn't true. Lelouch cared deeply, but… he thought it was better to let Suzaku think he didn't.

His hand twitched below the cuff of his sleeve. His cloak and hat hung at the back of his abandoned chair. Time seemed to have stopped, for neither of them moved. This all would have been much, much easier if Lelouch had been able to find a different way out. If he had only been able to atone for everything some other way, some way that didn't involve Suzaku, some plan that could give them both what they wanted and forge this world its peace without the extra heartache. Lelouch could have avoided dying, perhaps. He could have lived, and died naturally, in some other time and place. He stared down at his fingers.

But to die that way…. No, death should be grand, should it not? It should mean something. Meaningless deaths were distasteful, and a waste. Even if he lived to old age, he might not die the way he wanted to, in a grand display of evil vanquished. Besides… those who weren't prepared to be fired on shouldn't fire on others, or so he had proclaimed at the start.

There was no God. No judgment or redemption other than what men made on their own. The truth was, if he lived, he might die later of a cancer, or in some indiscriminate and base automobile accident… or he might die an old man dreaming in his bed. There was no Devil to study the sum of his crimes and deduce that he deserved passage to Hell in a nightmarish, violent fashion. No. There was only Suzaku, right here and now, who could ensure without fail the splendid demise of the only real devil worth believing in — he, Lelouch vi Britannia.

He looked at Suzaku in the Zero uniform, glittering and dignified, and now — to his astonishment — crying. "Suzaku." Lelouch's stomach fluttered. Suzaku was the perfect angel of vengeance to kill him — beautiful and strong despite tears being shed.

"Suzaku, you're clearly upset with me. If that's the case, what further reservations do you have? Why not just accept that I am indeed the monster you always suspected me to be, and kill me without any guilt?"

Suzaku's answer confounded him. "You look nothing but good standing there so calmly, Lelouch, and I have always been hard pressed to destroy a thing that's good."

Lelouch paced to the bookshelves, turning his back on Suzaku quickly.

Good! How? How was it possible for Suzaku to stand there and see good in him, when Lelouch had so meticulously tried to portray himself as evil, to ease Suzaku's burden? He reached up and wiped a speck of dust from one of the bookends. His heart thundered.

"If you think I am good, then you delude yourself. You know better than anyone what despicable and thoughtless acts of brutality I am capable of."

"But that's just it, isn't it. You call them despicable, and thoughtless, and brutal."

Lelouch's eyes widened, but slowly, slowly he arranged his face into a smile of the gentlest sort. "Ah, you mean that someone truly evil would never think to brand his own acts with words like those."

Suzaku nodded, but he did not lift a finger to remove his shining tears. He remained carefully controlled, and for that, Lelouch admired him. When before had Suzaku been able to restrain his rampant emotions with such poise, such command, such determination? He cried, but unobtrusively, as if he would still concentrate, unashamed and unheeding of his tearflow entirely. He was changed. Yes, Suzaku had changed the moment he'd chosen to become the Knight of Zero, but these, these stoic tears were Lelouch's most striking reminder of it yet.

"Truly evil people don't possess the same kind of morality," Suzaku was saying. His green eyes glimmered their way into Lelouch's heart without mercy, and Lelouch regretted not fiddling more with the bookends. "They don't linger long enough on the thought of their murders or their destruction to see that it's brutal, or unfair, or wrong."

"You're right," Lelouch said, still with his humorless smile.

"You want me to kill you because you've made yourself a symbol of evil and hatred, but the fact that you want yourself defeated only proves that you're good."

Lelouch's smile broke into something larger. Suzaku was finally beginning to think with objectivity, with scope, rather than with his hardheaded and limited idealism. Then, suddenly, the realization provoked pain instead of amusement, and the smile vanished into the contours of a frown. _Suzaku, what I would have given for you to see it this way sooner._

Lelouch turned his face away, that Suzaku might be spared the bitterness there. What _would_ he have given for this seasoned Suzaku to emerge earlier in the game? A full unit of the Black Knights, a group of innocent hostages? Their lives for the White Knight's loyalty? What would he have traded to get Suzaku to join him, to understand him, to confide in him, rather than to condemn him?

"Lelouch?"

But no. Regrets were petty. Suzaku's condemnation was what Lelouch ultimately had needed to mark his rebellion for what it was. Without the White Knight to battle Zero, without Suzaku to discover and unveil Zero's identity to Charles, the world might never have been forced to call so deeply into question each of Lelouch's actions. The evil might have gone unpunished, or worse yet, perfectly justified. Lelouch, from the beginning, had counted upon Suzaku to punish him. Even before he had discovered Suzaku to be the pilot of the Lancelot, he had counted on his friend's idealism — on his kindness and righteous approach to justice — to make him suffer the appropriate self-reproach. Suzaku also possessed a capacity to understand, to see into Lelouch's soul, and now that capacity had blossomed to fruition — but that was all the more reason why Lelouch had chosen Suzaku. Only Suzaku could understand the depth of Lelouch's need for penance. The cool smile returned, and Lelouch found he could stray from the bookshelf.

"Your intentions make you good, Lelouch."

"You are sorely mistaken. My actions were murderous and compromising. Intentions mean nothing."

"Don't talk that way. You're really going to go through with this — give up your own life for so many others — and that perfectly illustrates your merit, in my eyes alone if in no one else's. Merit that you will have won back in full after you're gone! That's why I'm telling you you're good."

Lelouch reeled under the onslaught. Why was Suzaku so insistent, so riled about Lelouch's reading on the scale of good and evil? Was he concerned, perhaps, about the existence Lelouch would have after he passed? Mortified against all logic at the thought that he might be sending Lelouch to Hell, if Hell existed? What Suzaku was arguing, essentially, was Lelouch's inner goodness. But what did that matter now! Lelouch flung an arm out as if to stage some magnificent rebuttal, but midway through the motion he cast a palm over his face. The question of goodness vexed him beyond comprehension**. **This Suzaku was proving to be a handful — one Lelouch felt with an electric keenness he adored more than ever, but one that nevertheless needed to be set straight. If that meant giving Suzaku more of the truth than he'd originally intended, so be it.

"Whether or not I'm good, Suzaku… don't you see, it doesn't matter to me. I simply have too much blood on my hands. You're wrong — I can't entirely forget what's happened in the past. There are too many memories that cause me pain. If I am good like you say, then perhaps that's why I feel this guilt, and why I will not tolerate anything less than my own destruction. I want my life to end. And yet I want it also to mean something for the future of those that I leave behind." Suzaku supported himself against the mantle now with the Zero mask still dangling in one hand, and Lelouch moved past him, back to his lonely chair to grip the edge of it, fingers digging into his cloak that lay there limp. White on white, pale as death. "I am asking you to help me achieve my last desire. Would you find fault in me for that?"

"Lelouch," Suzaku said, and now the tears flowed uncontrolled. Something of the old, sentimental Suzaku had risen to the surface through the layers of inveterate steel. Lelouch looked away, unnerved, for he would rather have the composed and objective angel of vengeance there in Zero's clothes, the ruthless Knight of Zero, the marble-hearted Knight of Rounds. Anything but the image of the distraught Ashford schoolboy he saw now. He couldn't have predicted the truth would have this effect.

"You make this so difficult," Suzaku said, gripping the mantle as hard as Lelouch gripped his chair. "No matter the ends, isn't it a horrible crime to kill something good? Can't you stay alive and find some way to properly atone, if you think yourself so guilty!"

A bolt of anger rent Lelouch's heart. He whirled away from the chair, and his eyes flashed with heat.

"But that's to be _your_ fate," he spat, "or have you already forgotten? Suzaku, I am too guilty even to live and attempt to atone. Atonement will not come that way, and neither will the right future! For someone who's always wanted to die for his sins, you have an unfair knack for accusing me of the same sentiments."

Suzaku appeared stricken. The wide-open aggrieved expression turned Lelouch's stomach worse than ever, and immediately he wanted to advance to Suzaku's side, to wipe the injury from Suzaku's features with soft words and apologies, but he didn't. Was this his chosen destiny, to hurt Suzaku again and again, until the very end, and in so doing hurt himself? The ticking of the clock counted out the seconds of silence, as if to mock them.

It seemed they always tore each other to tatters. But perhaps it was better this way.

"Suzaku," Lelouch said, forcing his voice to leave him more mildly. "Neither of us can afford to be selfish. You can't hope to die now any more than I can hope to live. It's you who is making this difficult. Remember that each of us holds the key to the only choice the other feels he has left. You can kill me; I can offer you a worthy life. If you refuse to kill me and become Zero, then you will remain in the same tortured state of wanting to die and being forever unable to, and I will wallow in a life of misery because I cannot in any number of alternate acts successfully atone for my brutality. I cannot do this without you. Do not make me feel as if I am forcing something on you when we both know I am not. You took the mask from me when I offered it. If we want to right the world, this is all that's left for us, and we must cooperate." His blood felt thick in his veins.

"This isn't cooperation. This is perfectly executed manipulation, carried out in the same cunning fashion as everything else you've ever done." The tears had ceased, and the dull-eyed glare that accompanied Suzaku's declaration was poison. Stubborn resistance born of all the torment, Lelouch recognized. A form of lashing out when there was nothing left but a truth one didn't want to accept. Lelouch sighed, weary of this kind of resistance. It only epitomized for him the heartbreak that was Suzaku Kururugi — the losses Suzaku had suffered, the sharp edges he'd formed as a result of them, the way he was still — underneath the military paragon shaped by Britannian devilry — simply Suzaku, and suffering now because he couldn't escape himself.

Lelouch didn't know how to ease Suzaku's pain any more.

Recognizing it now was surely part of Lelouch's punishment. Ache though it did to hear Suzaku abuse him, Lelouch burned with a deep and morbid gratitude; he knew he warranted it — this antagonistic hatred from the person that he cared for. It had been the same with Nunnally inside the Damocles. Bitter agony to hear her condemn him, and yet soul-twisting satisfaction in it because such was only appropriate, such was all he merited from such a wholesome person.

"Lelouch, I hate you and I love you," Suzaku grated without warning from the fireplace. "I hate myself for loving you, with the same passion for which I love to hate you."

Lelouch chilled.

The chill begot a shudder. Suzaku wet his lips and the shudder left a dangerous heat.

Hate and love, that was the crux of Zero Requiem with Suzaku, was it not? No matter how heinous Lelouch had been and how Nunnally had reviled him, the reality was that _her_ heart held only love for her brother. Nunnally was too pure to feel otherwise, despite her better efforts. It was Suzaku, it was the contradictory combination of love and hatred together that was most potent… and what Lelouch craved more than his own life. Only someone who both hated him and loved him like Suzaku did, who both sympathized with him and admonished him, could possibly snuff his life away in a fashion that carried meaning for them both, and for the world. He'd always known it.

_I hate you and I love you._ The words satisfied him.

But what of his own stance on the matter? Lelouch replied only after he had swallowed the bulk of his emotions.

"I only love you, Suzaku," he said. Somewhere in his mind Lelouch noted the absurdity of claiming such passion without feeling in his tone, but at least he had admitted it.

Suzaku's fingers slipped against the Zero mask and it clattered to the hearth. The knight glanced down at the fallen object, and at his hand, as if uncomprehending, and then up again at Lelouch, who was smiling sadly now with one corner of his mouth. Suzaku — responding with a moment of ordinary clumsiness in the face of a poignant moment. It was just like Suzaku to be shocked in that manner. But was it really so astonishing to Suzaku that Lelouch would truly care for him? God, what had he done to make Suzaku distrust him so?

Ah, that was a stupid question.

Nevertheless, Lelouch wondered if he dared repeat his sentiment, to pull Suzaku farther from his hatred and his angry reason if only for one more instant of innocent bewilderment, but he decided against it. It would have to be enough.

Suzaku's pose was stiff, as if mortar had been poured into his body and left to set there. "It doesn't change the way I hate you," he replied at last, in a monotone equal to that of the one Lelouch had used.

"Are you certain?" Lelouch asked. Suzaku flinched backward when Lelouch advanced to meet him at the mantle. Lelouch marveled again at Suzaku's dual emotions. "Do you hate me _more_ now for loving you, as well as for everything else?"

After he asked it, he wondered why it mattered. Was the balance of Suzaku's feeling still intact, or could it be swayed by what Lelouch himself admitted to feeling? …Why did Lelouch care? He blinked away the questions and waited.

Suzaku exploded, pain breaking free to contort his features in the downward curve of tragedy. He brushed Lelouch aside with one arm and stalked back to the door, as if determining to exit, but then he spun around. "How can I hate you for loving me!" he cried. "What I hate is that you use it now to ask me to take your life with my own hands, even though you know I—"

"—'love you back?'" Suzaku halted. "Is that it after all, Suzaku?" Heartskip. "That is it."

Defeat. Evident misery. "Lelouch. Don't make me feel the things you've already made it clear I most need to forget when I'm in your presence. You infuriate me." Lelouch felt the slightest pain of agony in watching Suzaku's face go through its changes. Suzaku really _did_ hate himself for it.

Lelouch spoke smoothly. "If you love me, Suzaku, kill me. If you hate me, kill me. I don't care which it is, or if it's both. It hardly matters." Fuming, fiery disbelief from the figure before him. "But all of it aside, if we were ever really friends, then I ask this task of you now. I ask you this favor in friendship. _Kill me_." He watched Suzaku's breathing quicken. "Please, Suzaku. Finish this." He hoped Suzaku would pull through.

Suzaku struggled. "It's just, despite what I know you deserve, suddenly I… I almost don't want you to die at all, much less by these hands of mine." Suzaku formed fists inside Lelouch's Zero gloves, and Lelouch repeated, coolly, "Almost."

Suzaku no longer appeared to be breathing.

"I think you're too easily forgetting your own side of the plan," Lelouch said gently, when Suzaku's fists had finally fallen slack. "You will be able to free yourself as well as me by doing this, remember?"

"But that's—"

"Do you want that, Suzaku? Do you want your proper punishment — a way to redeem yourself that works in the fact that you have no choice but to live on? Think not of me now, but of yourself." Lelouch held his gaze.

It was a long time before Suzaku answered. Lelouch could hear his men in the hall, bustling, calling to one another, taking their leave to begin procession operations.

"Yes, Lelouch," Suzaku said. "I want that end."

Lelouch tried to conceal his macabre bolt of triumph. They had wriggled blindly through the maze and broken free at last. "And I want my end. And we two are the only two on earth capable of granting each other's wishes."

"Wishes again," Suzaku said, staring away sullenly, but with resignation. "Like the Geass, the way you said it before. That wishes and the Geass are the same."

"Whatever you're willing to believe that will take away the pain," Lelouch whispered, but he wasn't sure Suzaku heard him. Could Suzaku rest easy now?

"I don't know if I'll remember my purpose, or my wishes, when the sword is in my hands and the one standing in front of me is you," Suzaku murmured, and the tears started fresh again, welling in his eyes like dewdrops on leaves of jade. To think Suzaku was such a fountain of tears!

Lelouch considered Suzaku's statement. He walked to the corner behind the tea table and lifted the mentioned sword from where it stood, propped and waiting. Suzaku did not appear surprised to see it. Lelouch moved back and placed the hilt tenderly in Suzaku's trembling hands.

"Then I will remind you," Lelouch said, his lips turning up in sorrowful satisfaction to feel Suzaku's fingers close automatically over the weapon. "With my dying breaths, I will remind you why it is you slay me, and what you do for yourself and your fate when you do. I will help you hold on to your resolution, help you to see it through."

Suzaku bowed his head, his sobs wracking him head to foot though they were silent now, and his bangs brushed Lelouch's cheek. They stood close as if they were about to embrace, and they would stand this close again, with this same gleaming sword, this same passion circuiting between them. One last time.

"Promise me that you'll…" Lelouch began, but he couldn't finish.

Suzaku looked up. He blinked away a fog of tears, and his eyes seemed as deep and full of shadow as some forgotten forlorn bayou. Fronds and vines of green dancing in his irises. Lelouch found himself lost. "I'll never be able to forgive myself for this," Suzaku said.

"You will, one day, and that is fine. That is what I want."

"Lelouch, that will never—"

"Promise me you'll do it." His fingers extended to touch Suzaku's damp cheek, to spirit away the tears. He wanted Suzaku to promise not to betray him, not to break under his wild emotions and disavow their plan.

Suzaku's eyes glistened. Lelouch feared the waters of the bayou would swallow him. "If it's really what you want, then I swear on my honor as Knight of Zero, and now as Zero himself, that I will carry out this task you ask of me. I'll kill you, Lelouch, as promised."

Breathless, immersed. He couldn't tear his gaze away. "Good. See to it you do."

"Yes, Your Majesty… Lelouch." Suzaku whispered it. His hand came up over his chest out of habit. Lelouch sagged in relief. All doubts had been disposed of. He had accomplished his task in making Suzaku resolute.

He looked at the clock. Suzaku looked toward the window, likely straining to see across to the pavement, from whence they would launch the escort Knightmares and the floats. It was very nearly time for them to go. Suzaku made a little conclusive motion as if to move away with the sword and retrieve the fallen mask from the hearth.

The motion broke the spell of relief. A sound tore from Lelouch's throat that shook them both.

It was Suzaku's name, low and husky, rent with pain and a sudden unwillingness to let go that wasn't supposed to be there.

Suzaku wore a pinched expression, the sword hanging in interlude at his side. "What is it? It's time to…."

Lelouch's limbs twitched to life. He lifted a bare hand to Suzaku's hair with the intent of tangling his fingers there, of feeling the thick wavy strands like the threads of life itself. Yes, the essence of remaining life suddenly equaled Suzaku, Suzaku here before him as he would never be again — for soon Suzaku would don a mask and cease to be himself, and Lelouch would die. Lelouch wanted to linger in what was still left. He reached out, heedless of the wary flicker that fast became stupefaction and then warning in Suzaku's eyes.

To embrace Suzaku, to greet intimately at last the passion of the one who would grant his final wish… that was what he wanted.

Suzaku's free hand flew out to nab Lelouch's wrist, halting any progress.

"Lelouch, isn't the pain we've already caused each other enough?" The tempting bayou was gone now; Suzaku's eyes were hard and glittering — like the scales on a serpent, the mark of something lethal and beautiful to come. The sword gleamed in his hand.

Lelouch knew then that Suzaku understood all of it. Everything — every desire and lost hope and regret and hidden pain and dark _urge_ for pain in retribution, and the need to mask it all for the sake of what they would do. Everything. The greatest mystery was that Suzaku still did not forgive him; Lelouch could sense it in Suzaku's grip. But then, if Suzaku were to forgive him, wouldn't he also have to forgive himself? If Suzaku did that, there could be no Zero Requiem. Lelouch looked at the hand on his wrist. Suzaku had said it himself already — he would never forgive himself. And so he would never forgive Lelouch, no matter how much of Lelouch he understood. That was why Suzaku was the only one Lelouch could count on. Suzaku was unshakable, for better or worse.

Suzaku had asked him a question, but Lelouch found he couldn't answer.

Ties like this. Love so strong and complicated that it rubbed shoulders with hate… morphed into hate, morphed back. The only force in the world that could change destinies, heal loneliness, move mountains and rival the power of brute will and war and weapons. This was what Lelouch wanted to create for the whole world, even if he had to forfeit it for himself to do so. Lelouch sidestepped caution and let the fingers of his hand twitch downward, until they brushed Suzaku's. And then Suzaku — vengeful, ruthless, sun-browned beautiful Suzaku — was releasing Lelouch's wrist.

The blade of the sword came between them.

Suzaku inhaled. "Lelouch."

"Yes, Suzaku." Subdued, submissive. So unlike him, but how else was he to react after something so soul-tearing?

"There's so much more I want," Suzaku said, holding the weapon carefully, using it as a barrier rather than a threat, "but neither of us—"

"—deserves it. Or can afford to give in to it. I know, Suzaku, I know. It's enough." It had to be, for the clock read ten to noon.

Suzaku seemed to consider him, seemed to fight hard with something else inside his mind. "We've always had it, haven't we, this tension and opposition clashing with support and friendship, and the desire for so much more we couldn't put words to."

"Do you hate me for making you see it clearly?"

Suzaku ran his thumb aimlessly along the sword's hilt as he spoke. "It doesn't matter whether or not I do, does it."

"Ah," Lelouch said, "You're learning." Suzaku's features flickered. "Come here."

Suzaku obeyed, and Lelouch guided his hands, took the sword hilt and lifted it in demonstration. The blade slipped dangerously close to his midriff, but he wasn't afraid. "Hold it like this when it's time. Try to pierce something vital."

Suzaku's murmur rippled his hair. "You know I know how to do it, Lelouch. Why are you—"

"Shhh." Lelouch leaned in recklessly, but Suzaku put distance between them and busied himself with tucking the sword into its sheath. Lelouch closed his eyes, sad despite his pride in Suzaku's strength. Suzaku was doing this for both of them — vanquishing Lelouch slowly, making him suffer before the final blow in the best way he knew how, and that was only natural. Lelouch had done terrible things. "You do right," he said. "Forgive me." The last two words elicited the expected hardening around Suzaku's eyes. Lelouch felt even sadder.

"Go now," Suzaku said to him.

So this, then, was how it ended? Dismissal, frustration, dissatisfaction, mingled love and hatred. This was his Suzaku — the Suzaku of the past, present, and future rolled in one entity, irresistible and unbendable. Did Lelouch regret anything?

He moved in one last time, to lay a chaste kiss on Suzaku's cheek before he could be stopped. _Farewell, _he wanted to say, _I leave the world in your hands._ But Suzaku already knew, and Suzaku didn't respond to the kiss. Lelouch turned to go, retrieving first his cloak from where it hung waiting on the chair, and then his hat. He donned them meticulously over his other garments, and with them came his resolution.

He was Lelouch the Devil, demon emperor. He had a world to subject to his tyrannical will.

"I will be located, of course, on my private float, but Nunnally and Schneizel will be chained there near me, separate from the other prisoners. Take care not to involve them." Suzaku nodded, and finally knelt to pick up the Zero mask.

Lelouch neared the door, strangely at peace again. Fitting, all of it, the way this drama would close its curtain.

Without setting eyes on Suzaku another time, he spoke. "Thank you, from the bottom of my heart."

There was a thickness in Suzaku's voice. "Lelouch…." Lelouch held up a hand to silence him.

The dust motes danced in the sunlight. All was quiet for a moment.

Suzaku was crying still, Lelouch could tell.

"Don't fail me, Zero."

Ringing certainty above the steps of Lelouch's retreating footfalls. "I don't intend to."

As Lelouch passed through the door, he smiled to himself. "Good."

* * *

_Author Note:_

_I think it would be interesting to read this, watch Lelouch's death scene, and then read my story "Forgiven." I might do that myself out of sheer glee and arrogance. Despite having written the two stories backwards, I have managed to chronologically fill up the immediate period before and after the execution of Zero Requiem… from two different viewpoints. This I did by sheer accident and not planning. (I guess it's just how my brain works when it comes to fanfics – I stick frightfully close to the canon and work only in conceivable instances…?) I'm thinking now there's no question of mystery left about what they did and why and how — at least, what the Suzaku and Lelouch _**anja-chan**_ and I believe in did, and why and how. (Much more accurate to put it that way, hah.) Pffftt, if nobody understands exactly what Suzaku and Lelouch were going for after this, I dunno what to tell you._

_I've been reading a shit-ton of Anne Rice lately. I expect the parallels to some concepts in her Vampire Chronicles are evident if you're well acquainted with them. She's also infected my Gurren Lagann fanfics. It happens. _

_I'm not sure anyone besides my Lelouch has noticed, but I've been naming all my SuzaLulu fics after songs we both chose a while ago for a SuzaLulu playlist. This fic should have been titled, "Time to Say Goodbye," after the most beautiful KOKIA song ever, but let's face it — my creative instinct cut in to say, "That title sucks/is lame/is clichéd/is stupid." Instead I toyed with, "With One Last Kiss," which is another line from the song I found meaningful and appropriate, but I still didn't think it made a great title. It was possibly even MORE cliché and it gave away the kiss. So I chopped it down to "One Last," scoffed and asked, "One last _what?_" and finally settled on "Time to Say." But that was worse. So I went back to "One Last" and figured, "To hell with it; make your own interpretation," just to keep from entirely breaking the pattern. I still dislike it, but since I have issues coming up with my own titles in general, I decided to take what I could use and shut up. It works well enough in the end. It could be one last kiss, one last goodbye, one last moment together, one last vision of an important person, one last chance to say "I love you," one last chance to change your mind… anything, really. Evoking endless possibility, if not eloquence. So it goes, and PLEASE if anyone has any better input on this, I will gladly change the title. SAVE ME.  
_

_Below are the lyrics in English translation. I usually don't bother with this sort of thing, but this song is… meaningful to me, and since my title does the story no justice, I thought I'd let the lyrics speak for themselves._

**_Time To Say Goodbye, by KOKIA_**

_That parting scene where we couldn't touch each other_

_Made me stronger._

_If I hadn't met you then, I wouldn't know you._

_It seems obvious, but I'm glad that coincidence happened._

_I've got to go — time to say goodbye_

_With my best smile._

_The sheer number of partings makes me stronger._

_If we close our eyes, we can see each other any time._

_These warm memories will always reside in my heart_

_That smile that gave me those pure feelings._

_With one last kiss, time to say goodbye_

_Full of gratitude_

_I'm glad I met you. We'll meet again someday._

_Hold me so we never forget._

_Even if we're apart, you're with me, even more than before_

_Now, I can walk forward, looking towards the future._

_The sheer number of partings makes me stronger._

_If we close our eyes, we can see each other any time._

_With one last kiss… time to say goodbye._


End file.
